Rev Janet Callahan

Priestess and Author

a plethora of -isms

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When I was in high school, we took one of those standardized tests one year. We had to fill out our name and other information, and we were asked our race/ethnicity. I marked “American Indian/Alaskan Native” and went about my day (while the paperwork was not complete then, I am now an enrolled member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, as is my mother and her mother before her), but when we got our forms back for the second day of testing, my box had been erased and “White” was filled in.

I don’t remember all of the details, but the long and short of it was that my school counselor told me that I couldn’t mark American Indian because he believed that they meant, “You know, like, people who live on reservations.”

So…. those people,  over there, who would never go to his school? Was it because my skin, a blend of my father’s German heritage and my mother’s mix of Native and Scottish and Irish, was too light? Or maybe because my hair isn’t black? Writing it now, I wish I’d asked him what he meant by that – was he spouting the same revisionist history taught in our history books each year? Or just so ignorant that he really thought there were no Indians in his community?

I already disliked this man before this test;  I would grow to hate him after a later comment implying that women in general, much less anyone from our little town, were not big-name school material was directed at me when I asked about resources for applying to a specific school. So my guess is he was biased in many ways, and ignorant on top of it.

I’ve been reminded of this story lately – my little corner of the internet seems full of -isms lately – racism, sexism, ableism, classism, genderism (is that even a word?), people making snap judgements based on religion and age and whether you have children, whether you work out of the house or stay home with your kids, and on and on.

And it’s not just “those people over there” doing it – some of it is right here in our Pagan community.

Now, to be frank, I know I’m not perfect on this subject. I have privilege – a whole heaping lot of it. But at least I know it’s there, even if I don’t always know where it’s blinding me to the experiences of others, and knowing means that I at least look for it when these sorts of things come up.

Being on the receiving end of an -ism is a mystery, much like many Pagan faiths. You can read up on how it feels, learn about the history and how things really are out there in the world, but you can’t know how it feels to be that person on the receiving end unless you share their background, or a very similar one.

I know it’s hard to work past our cultural conditioning…but like so many other things, the paradigm of Pagan faiths is different than that of more mainstream faiths, and it still surprises me that more of us don’t at least make an effort to work past these things.

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Pagan Blog Project: Blood

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Hospital life is still eating up my time, so I missed the first week of B prompts. This week I’m writing about blood.

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Most Pagan groups are against using blood in ritual. I find that it can be useful in specific situations.

Menstrual blood has been useful to me in fertility rites, for example. It’s a symbol of life and death all at the same time. And one of my Matron Goddesses finds it to be an appropriate offering.

I’ve used blood to create a protective element for someone else before – someone I was sure needed my help, and who I trusted with that part of myself.

Mostly, though, I feel like there’s nothing we can’t use – if the Divine is immanent, it is in my blood and yours, just as sure as it is in the rocks and trees. Why wouldn’t we use this lovely symbol in our rituals?

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An Open Letter to My Christian Friends

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It’s that time of year where all over the internet, there are assertions that the only acceptable greeting is “Merry Christmas” and that anyone who doesn’t agree is a horrible person. There’s even a photo this year that says we should just leave the US entirely.

I can’t help but think that it’s a terribly un-Christian thing to say. As the bracelet says, WWJD – What would Jesus do? My guess is that he’d follow the golden rule (That’s Matthew 7:12, for those following along in your Bibles), which says, “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.”

So, you know what that means? That means you ought to greet each and every person with a greeting appropriate to the holiday(s) they celebrate this time of year, if you want people to greet you with a greeting that honors your sacred day.

And then remember that the God, Gods, or Goddesses we worship (or choosing not to worship any of them) is enshrined in the US constitution, and there’s no religion test to be a US citizen.

And since I don’t know which holidays each of my readers celebrates, Happy Holidays to you and yours, no matter what holidays those might be.

Check out my new energy work page, http://www.facebook.com/GoodVibrationsEnergyStudio

What Constitutes Child Friendly?

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Recently, Acorn and I spent a little bit of time at our local Pagan Pride Day.

Now, I’ll admit to being biased – the event has had several different organizers over the years, and none have seemed all that organized, but this year was particularly chaotic. There was still no published schedule the day of the event; presenters were invited to email or call to find out their time slots, and as a former (and probably future) presenter, that would drive me batty. There’s no published vendor list (and I’m betting, based on what I saw, that few, if any, vendors made their table fees), so those folks aren’t getting any continuing advertising for their efforts. The combination makes me a bit wary of future involvement – running an event like this isn’t an easy task, but these seem to be basic things that ought to be a priority for a festival.

At any rate, I guess you could say this event was child friendly, because it was in a public park, and the playscape was the focal point for the kids. We didn’t stay all day, but other than this, I saw no evidence of anything that would interest children, other than the vendor with tumbled stones (who, of course, caught Acorn’s attention – she had carnelian, and Acorn is obsessed with all things orange).

I’ve been approached about running kids activities at other local events. Almost no one wants to do them, and my previous involvement in SpiralScouts marks me around here as someone who does “kid things.” And right now, I’m not really up to doing anything….but quite frankly, I do more than just kid things, and I don’t want to be stuck dealing with other people’s kids all. freaking. day. – especially at a festival, where I’d like to have an opportunity to enrich myself as well as others.

I feel like I’ve complained about this before, and I probably have. I just don’t know where I put the various rants 🙂

One festival I attend regularly has a kids & families programming track, but the quality and age options vary greatly, and parents frequently seem to feel it’s meant as a babysitting service. Many places don’t even have that though – kids are discouraged from attending, or there’s nothing for them to do at all, so parents are stuck figuring it out themselves.

Would it be so hard to have a kids’ area with activities? Little mini workshops?  Are there any festivals out there that do an amazing job of putting together stuff for kids to do? What would an awesome kids’ program look like at a festival?

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Being Pagan and Being in the Hospital

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This hospital thing is rather odd. Acorn’s birth was the first time I’d ever been admitted to a hospital; I was here 12 days then, most of it too sick to even get out of bed.

Today is day 13 this time. At least I can go to the bathroom on my own.

And, of course, there was the more than 9 months Acorn spent in the NICU, but visiting every day is different from being here 24/7 – being the patient is different than being the parent.

Most weekdays, I’ve had a visit from either a chaplain or a chaplain-in-training. They’ve all been polite, but some have been more talkative than others, and some have made more of an effort to be personable than others. So far, I think I liked the Jewish guy best, who recommended I consider what sort of support I wanted/needed, and then go about asking for that, rather than hoping people will be supportive.

My suspicion is that if I ask them about Pagan chaplain support, the only person they’ll find on file is me. How sad is that? It’s true though, and probably common in most major cities.

With Acorn, we mostly avoided interactions with the chaplains. There was, in the early days, too much of a feeling that we were on display in a fishbowl, and that we had to tread lightly for his safety…and by the time we were comfortable enough to bring anything religious into his room, we didn’t have the time or energy to find things, and we didn’t really want to rock the boat.

It is highly unlikely that we’ll skip the NICU with Leaf, thought we all believe that Leaf will not stay nearly as long as Acorn did, having avoided IUGR to this point. Leaf is bigger, healthier, stronger – and if we make it another 10 days without delivering, Leaf will be older (gestationally) than Acorn was too. But this time is different – we have experience, and we know what we’re getting into….and I’ve already got plans working to have a little altar/shrine in Leaf’s room.

It’s actually going to start out here in my room – a small Goddess offering bowl statue that I ordered this week, and likely one of Acorn’s handkerchief sized play silks as an altar cloth. In here, I’m hoping for fresh flowers to use as offerings; by the time Leaf gets here I hope to have tracked down some of those little LED votive candles, since I don’t think they allow flowers upstairs in the NICU. Maybe a family photo? I’m not sure I have a decent one of all of us; I know I don’t have any little photo frames, so it may end up being several photos in different frames.

Beyond that, I’m not sure what else. I guess we’ll see.

Check out my new energy work page, http://www.facebook.com/GoodVibrationsEnergyStudio